How I use my Bullet Journal — a great practical guide to using a bullet journal.

#InterestingReads #BulletJournal

An idea: instead of just keeping old blog posts lying around, why not print them and turn them into a self published book? Then you can store them in a bookshelf at home.

This idea was somewhat inspired by this post by Kin Lane.

#Blogging

God never gives you a dream that matches your budget. He's not checking your bank account, he's checking your faith. ~ Mark Walhberg

#Quotes #Spirituality

Selective Ignorance is when you pick and choose what you want to focus on or what you want to learn, instead of taking in everything that's available out there. You want to consider doing this, because we don't have time to learn everything. So, you have to be selective. It is as Ness says, a form of intentional knowledge.

Source: Selective ignorance: cultivating intentional knowledge in a chaotic world

^ This is also a great way to help avoid information overload.

#AvoidingInformationOverload #DigitalMinimalism

One of the best things I've learned a few years ago: I don’t need to have an opinion on everything. There are things that are beyond my control and it’s pointless to wallow in them. Having an opinion on everything is like paying attention to something that didn’t ask for your attention.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRFQkXanEd5/?utmmedium=copylink

#DigitalMinimalism

https://john.do/today/ — seems to be was good advice for starting/restarting a blog. Unfortunately navigating to that page seems to elicit some warnings on the browser, so browse at your own risk.

Anyway, my takeaway from this was: Writing is all about putting down your imperfect thoughts and ideas into paper. This allows you to reflect on your thoughts and ideas, and then go from there.

#Blogging #Writing

Series: #JournalEntry Tags: #InterestingReads #BulletJournal #Blogging #Quotes #Spirituality #AvoidingInformationOverload #DigitalMinimalism #Writing

Last week I remembered why I chose to go with pen and paper for my bullet journal — it was to give my eyes a break from staring at screens all day long.

My only issue with this analog approach to journals, is how to digitize the text that I wrote so that they can be searchable in the future. Sure, bullet journals have an index for tracking down specific topics. But let's face it, that doesn't even come close to being able to search text digitally.

I previously tried to get around this by publishing journal entries on this site. As part of writing those posts, the content from my bullet journal would end up in a text (markdown) file when I download a backup of this site. This benefit went away when I decided to stop writing journal entries.

Now, I'm doing a similar thing with these Weeknotes posts. This time around though, my journal entries end up in my Obsidian vault. I still have to manually type them in though. This is the part I'm trying to streamline. But I'm not sure that's even possible. It's either I ditch my analog bullet journal and go straight to digital journal apps, or just continue what I'm doing — write on my bullet journal then migrate (type up) my notes into Obsidian sometime later in the day or week.

If you have some thoughts that are stuck in your head, write them down so that you can get them out of your head. This frees up your brain and allows it to think about or focus on something else. Like you know, what you should be working on instead.

An idea: Instead of creating a “microblog” to house micro/short posts, or creating one as a social media replacement, how about creating one to hold micro thoughts (or atomic notes) on a specific topic? I'm thinking more of a digital garden here versus a Twitter replacement.

I started trying to build a digital garden on Are.na using excerpts from my journal entries. This also solves one of the problems I've had for awhile now — how to take excerpts out of my Weeknotes posts and put them into their own stand alone posts.

I actually think Are.na is better suited for displaying excerpts, than it is for building a digital garden. But we'll see how it goes. The alternative to it would be another Write.as blog. One using the Novel format, which means no published dates on the posts.

For now though, the use of Are.na is free, at least until I hit the 500 block limit. So I'll try it first and see what I can come up with.

It doesn't do back-links like Obsidian does, but it is possible to connect blocks to a channel. I wish they would allow connecting a block to another block, but they don't. So I'll just try to work with what it can do.

Some great reads last week were Brandon's post about “Home” and Scott Nesbitt's take on digital gardens.

Regarding digital gardens. Scott mentions using Write.as to build a digital garden. I have thought of using Write.as as well, but so far have not figured out the best approach to it. I believe that once Write.as allows a custom static homepage, then it will pave the way to being able to use it to create a digital garden. Until then, it will look more or less like another blog.

This is also another reason why I elected to try building a digital garden with Are.na first.

Found this new site, habitica.com. It seems like it could be used to help accomplish some self-improvement goals.

This was a photo that the wife sent me last week. I definitely agree with that!

Content moved to... Basics of Using Git from the Command Line

Last week I managed to solve my first ever React issue. The React developer in our team had the day off, so I tried figuring it out on my own. After getting the location of the source code from a team member, I was able to figure out why the app was taking us to another page. I am not a React expert, but apparently I can understand it enough to figure out the issue. I'm so proud of myself. The work that I've been doing with trying to learn React is not going to waste.

The song “Where I Belong”, which features Simple Plan, State Champs and We The Kings is such a good song!

I found a reason And suddenly I'm not so alone I'm finally breathing Like I never could on my own Start the countdown, let's get it on Scream our lungs out to our favorite song 'Cause this is where I belong (This is where I belong)

Could listening to music possibly reduce the stress levels brought about by work? I think it does. I was getting stressed out at work and then “Uh Oh” by Junior Doctor started playing. I immediately felt this sense of relief come over me. I felt much more calm and settled. So yeah, I think listening to music while working does help lower stress levels.

Just noticed Davin going over a YouTube video on how to build a tower in Minecraft. He then tried to mimic what he saw in the video and build the tower himself in the game. I thought that was pretty amazing for such a young kid. And amazing that a game fosters that kind of learning and creativity.

The hardest part of raising an infant is the countless sleepless nights. You're not going to get any sleep until your infant is asleep.

And for this week's installment of #FunnyThingsMyKidsSay:

Me and Davin were in another room. I was on the PC, while Davin was reading a book. We heard Baby Caleb cry and then my wife called out.

Davin: Dad, Mom is calling you. Good luck!

***

Davin was trying to color Thor in his coloring book.

Me: Davin, Thor’s clothes should be colored dark blue. Davin: That’s not dark blue, that’s black blue!

I'll end this post with a photo of what dad life looked like last week.

Tags: #Weeknotes #Blogging #BulletJournal #DigitalGarden #FunnyThingsMyKidsSay #JuniorDoctor #Parenthood #Minecraft #Nutrition #PopRock #PopPunk #SelfImprovement #SimplePlan #StateChamps #WeTheKings

I already have a .NET wrapper library that can query their service for my posts. It might be a fun project to try in the future.

Struggling so much with the “ASP.NET Core 3 and React” book. I am simply following the instructions in the book, but I keep running into compile errors. The compile errors are brought about by the use of other libraries to help with development. I've had to spend more time troubleshooting the errors than actually reading the book.

At the end of another frustrating night trying to troubleshoot the errors, I realized the crux of the problem. The reason I was running into so many errors, is that the latest version of the libraries I was using, was not compatible with each other.

I'm moving to a new team mid-December. It's a front-end web development team. So, I have less than a month to learn React JS and ASP.NET Core.

And now you know why I'm struggling through an ASP.NET Core and React book.

Caleb is in full-on sleep regression mode this week. One night, he woke up a little past midnight and kept waking up every hour until like 5 am. We barely got any sleep. Even when Coney and myself took turns watching him, we both still had a rough night.

Migrating notes from my bullet journal into Obsidian seems kinda redundant. I've been trying to differentiate between what I write on my bullet journal and what I put on Obsidian. But at the end of the day, I still migrate notes from my bullet journal into Obsidian. So, why not just write exclusively in Obsidian? If I did, I could actually switch to a smaller Field Notes notebook for managing tasks. Maybe something to explore in the future.

Make a list of your 12 favorite problems and use them as a guide for what to tackle going forward. These problems will help you figure out what you need to be researching going forward. This seems like a great idea to help get started on a digital garden or personal knowledge-base.

I found it on Maggie Appleton's site, but the idea is supposedly from a certain Richard Feynman.

If permanent notes are the only ones that go into the “slip-box”, then they need to be worthy enough to be considered a permanent note then. And as far as digital gardens go, I think they are the best ones to share online. Fleeting notes get discarded. But literature notes, that served as inspiration for creating a permanent note, should be saved in a “reference box”.

Right now, all these boxes go against my workflow. I have multiple folders based on a certain topic. So not exactly the same setup. Though I'm starting to think that having just three folders – Fleeting Notes, Reference Box and Slip Box – would make everything simpler.

We post pictures of our lives. Okay, that’s nice. We share stupid memes. We all need a little humor. We debate politics, religion, economics, and a few dozen other topics. And what do we gain? Not much. Very few truly listen, and nobody really wins. We’re basically throwing hours of our lives away.

~ Dan Erickson, Social Media Is Mostly a F@cking Waste of Time

So I knew that pressing WIN + D in Windows will minimize all screens. I didn't realize pressing it again will bring all those screens back up. Useful, in case you accidentally minimize all screens.

I understand the “digital garden” metaphor as this — You plant seeds (ideas, thoughts) and tend to them until they grow into a tree with multiple branches (interconnected ideas and thoughts). You tend to the tree and in the future it will bear some fruit (articles, books, essays, videos). You do the same thing with other seeds and pretty soon you'll have a forest?

What I'm starting to realize is that I don't seem to be building a “digital garden” with Obsidian. What I'm building seems more of a personal wiki, a personal knowledge-base, a second brain. It's less of a garden and more of a collection of thoughts and ideas that I don't want to forget. There's not enough space in my brain to store them all, so I dump them out into Obsidian and build on it separately. So, really it's more like a second brain then.

Nothing in this world last, therefore nothing in this world must be the subject of our deepest desires.

Tags: #Weeknotes #DigitalGarden #Zettelkasten #BulletJournal #SocialMedia

Working with Obsidian and building a personal knowledge base has me on a high. I've been writing so much today (this week), it's crazy. And all this writing was done offline. If that isn't “writing for myself”, I don't know what is. I may be getting tired of writing blog posts, but apparently, I'm not tired of writing.

This leads me to thinking that this might be a better way to pass down my journal entries to my kids. Plain text files should hopefully outlive me. I don't have to do it through an online journal or a blog. I can just pass off my collection of text files to them.

It's interesting that, I am using a blog/journal, to post on social media to let my friends know I'm still alive. The problem is that the feed on social media runs on an algorithm. That means, my post might never even show up for my friends before they stop scrolling. Which means, what I'm using social media for, is actually not working for me.

Another interesting thing, is how logging daily notes in Obsidian, means I write down less stuff on my bullet journal. I don't know if this is good or bad. Cal Newport would probably say it is bad, because then I am increasing the time I spend looking at computer screens.

Have been dealing with WCF errors this week. I am so ready to leave behind WCF and move on to Restful API services.

I am little by little, slowly getting addicted to Obsidian. I even have it on my work PC now.

The description on my online journal was, “A peek into the mind of a software developer, husband, dad and gamer.” While somewhat true, now that I think about it, it's more of “A peek into the life of a software developer, husband, dad and gamer.” That's because a lot of the content I put out on there (here), is about stuff that's happened to me and to the people around me. There are occasional instances where you get an idea of what's on my mind, but mostly, it's about what happened to me. It is more like a diary, or a journal.

What I'm trying to get at is, the description — “A peek into the mind of a software developer, husband, dad and gamer” — is actually a better fit for a digital garden. A digital garden is exactly that, a peek into someone's mind. While a journal, or a diary, is more of a peek into someone's life.

For lunch, I ate a heavy meal from Panda Express. Later in the afternoon, I got a free Venti Vanilla Bean Latte from Coney. According to Fitbit, with the Venti Vanilla Bean Latte, I've already hit my target goal as far as amount of calories goes for the day. This shows how useful food tracking is. If I weren't tracking, I would have ate normally at dinner, which means I would have ate more than I was supposed to.

Currently trying out two other alternatives for my music blog. I'm trying one with Tumblr and another with Wordpress.

So, everytime I share a song, I try to do it on all three blogs. I find it easiest to share music to Tumblr. Next is Write.as. Last is Wordpress. Posting on Wordpress feels slow and can sometimes feel clunky. It's unfortunate because the Wordpress blog is the best looking of them all.

I'm starting to notice a difference between what I write on my bullet journal, and what I write in Obsidian for my digital garden. The things that happened to me, the things I did — those are the ones that go into my bullet journal.

On the other hand, useful realizations, ideas, thoughts that I've come across while reading or watching something — those go into Obsidian to grow my digital garden.

I noticed that Davin had a small nick on his wrist. It's close to the spot where he wears his Potty Training Watch. I'm not sure how, but we've stopped letting him wear the watch. It is unfortunate because it was pretty effective at getting him to pee on a schedule. But I'd rather not have him hurt himself in the process. Especially since he has this tendency to say he's okay, even when he's hurting.

Another night, another game of Protect the Pride Lands with Davin. This board game has been such a hit with Davin. He's requested to play this game every night since it arrived. It's good father and son bonding time for both of us.

You think compromise is a weakness. It’s not. It’s survival. ~ Waldo, Into The Badlands, Season 2 – Episode 4

God gives us his gifts, so we can be gifts to each other. ~ Fr. Anthony Densmore

If you don’t know about your past, you can’t shape your future. ~ Kemal, The Protector, Season 1 – Episode 5

Okay this post ended up longer than I expected. I'll try to be more selective next time. Otherwise I fear I'm going to get tired of keeping this up as well. Anyway, until I get a digital garden website up and running, this will have to do. I'll catch y'all later.

Tags: #Weeknotes #BulletJournal #DigitalGarden #Meta #NoteTaking #SocialMedia

Tags: #Photos #BulletJournal

My main reason for trying a pencil, is to see if it smears. The pens that I have, a Pilot G-2 and a Pentel Energel both with 0.7 tips, flow really well but the ink takes awhile to dry. It is unfortunate really because the black ink from those pens look really vibrant. It really pops out on the white pages of my Leuchtturm 1917 and makes the lines written with the pencil look bland.

Unfortunately, since I write really small and really quickly, I end up smearing the ink more often than not. I just sometimes don't have the patience to wait for the ink to dry. The Pentel Energel is already supposed to be a quick drying pen, but it still smears when I write quickly.

Both the pencil and pen have their pros and cons.

• Pencil
  • To me, the act of writing feels so much better with the pencil. There is no smearing and I can write as fast as I want to. My penmanship, though never really good to begin with, seems to look and flow much better when using a pencil.
  • However the lines on my journal seemed harder to read as it is not as vibrant as those written with pens.
• Pen
  • Writing with a pen produces lines that are really nice to look at. I feel like they are easier to read because the lines are so much clearer with ink. There is also this feeling of permanence that I get from writing entries using the pen.
  • However the ink tends to smear a lot because of the way I write. I've actually now taken to dabbing the newly written lines with a paper towel to reduce the chances of smearing. Obviously this increases the time before I can write a new line, but it seems like a good compromise for now until I find better pens to work with.

Tags: #BulletJournal